History Of The Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti History Essay

259-210 B.C. : The Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti is said to hold buried alive 460 Confucian bookmans to command the authorship of history in his clip. In 212 B.C. , he burned all the books in his land, retaining merely a individual transcript of each for the Royal Library-and those were destroyed before his decease. With all old historical records destroyed, he thought history could be said to get down with him.

A.D. 8: The Roman poet Ovid was banished from Rome for composing Ars Amatoria ( The Art of Love ) . He died in expatriate in Greece eight old ages subsequently. All Ovid ‘s plants were burned by Savonarola in Florence in 1497, and an English interlingual rendition of Ars Amatoria was banned by U.S. Customs in 1928.

35: The Roman emperor Caligula opposed the reading of The Odyssey by Homer, written more than 300 old ages earlier. He thought the heroic poem verse form was unsafe because it expressed Greek thoughts of freedom.

640: Harmonizing to fable, the calif Omar burned all 200,000 volumes in the library at Alexandria in Egypt. In making so, he said: “ If these Hagiographas of the Greeks agree with the Book of God they are useless and need non be preserved ; if they disagree, they are baneful and ought to be destroyed. ” In firing the books, the calif provided six months ‘ fuel to warm the metropolis ‘s baths.

1497-98: Savonarola, a Florentine spiritual overzealous with a big followers, was one of the most ill-famed and powerful of all censors. In these old ages, he instigated great “ balefires of the amour propres ” which destroyed books and pictures by some of the greatest creative persons of Florence. He persuaded the creative persons themselves to convey their works-including drawings of nudes-to the balefires. Some poets decided they should no longer compose in poetry because they were persuaded that their lines were wicked and impure. Popular vocals were denounced, and some were turned into anthem with new pious wordss. Ironically, in May of 1498 another great balefire was lit-this clip under Savonarola who hung from a cross. With him were burned all his Hagiographas, discourses, essays, and booklets.

1525: Six thousand transcripts of William Tyndale ‘s English interlingual rendition of the New Testament were printed in Cologne, Germany, and smuggled into England-and so burned by the English church. Church governments were determined that the Bible would be available merely in Latin.

1559: For 100s of old ages, the Roman Catholic Church listed books that were prohibited to its members ; but in this twelvemonth, Pope Paul IV established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For more than 400 old ages this was the unequivocal list of books that Roman Catholics were told non to read. It was one of the most powerful censoring tools in the universe.

1597: The original version of Shakespeare ‘s Richard II contained a scene in which the male monarch was deposed from his throne. Queen Elizabeth I was so angry that she ordered the scene removed from all transcripts of the drama.

1614: Sir Walter Raleigh ‘s book The History of the World was banned by King James I of England for “ being excessively saucy in reprimanding princes. ”

1624: Martin Luther ‘s German interlingual rendition of the Bible was burnt in Germany by order of the Pope.

1616-42: Galileo ‘s theories about the solar system and his support of the finds of Copernicus were condemned by the Catholic Church. Under menace of anguish, and sentenced to gaol at the age of 70, the great scientist was forced to abdicate what he knew to be true. On his decease, his widow agreed to destruct some of his manuscripts.

1720: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was placed on the Index Librorum by the Spanish Catholic Church.

1744: Sorrows of Young Werther by the celebrated German writer Goethe was published in this twelvemonth and shortly became popular throughout Europe. The book was a short novel, in diary signifier, in which a immature adult male writes of his agonies from a failed love matter. The concluding chapter of the book drops the diary signifier and diagrammatically depicts Werther ‘s self-destruction. Because a figure of imitator self-destructions followed the publication of the book, the Lutheran church condemned the novel as immoral ; so authoritiess in Italy, Denmark, and Germany banned the book. Two hundred old ages subsequently an American sociologist, David Phillips, wrote about the consequence of describing self-destructions in The Werther Effect.

1788: Shakespeare ‘s King Lear was banned from the phase until 1820-in respect to the insanity of the reigning sovereign, King George III.

1807: Dr. Thomas Bowdler softly brought out the first of his revised editions of Shakespeare ‘s dramas. The foreword claimed that he had removed from Shakespeare “ everything that can raise a bloom on the cheek of modestness ” -which amounted to about 10 per cent of the dramatist ‘s text. One hundred and fifty old ages subsequently, it was discovered that the existent deletion had been done by Dr. Bowdler ‘s sister, Henrietta Maria. The word “ bowdlerise ” became portion of the English linguistic communication.

1843: The English Parliament updated an act that required all dramas to be performed in England to be submitted for blessing to the Lord Chamberlain. Despite expostulations by celebrated figures such as George Bernard Shaw ( in 1909 ) , this power remained with the Lord Chamberlain until 1968.

1859: Charles Darwin ‘s Origin of Species was published, sketching the theory of development. The book was banned from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, where Darwin had been a pupil. In 1925, Tennessee banned the instruction of the theory of development in schools ; the jurisprudence remained in force until 1967. The Beginning of Species was banned in Yugoslavia in 1935 and in Greece in 1937.

1859: George Eliot ‘s fresh Adam Bede was attacked as the “ despicable springs of a obscene adult female ‘s head, ” and the book was withdrawn from circulation libraries in Britain.

1881: Walt Whitman ‘s Leafs of Grass ( published in 1833 ) was threatened with forbiddance by Boston ‘s territory lawyer unless the book was expurgated. The public tumult brought such gross revenues of his books that Whitman was able to purchase a house with the returns.

1885: A twelvemonth after the publication of Mark Twain ‘s Huckleberry Finn, the library of Concord, Massachusetts, decided to except the book from its aggregation. The commission doing the determination said the book was “ unsmooth, harsh and inelegant, covering with a series of experiences non promoting, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people. ” By 1907, it was said that Twain ‘s novel had been thrown out of some library someplace every twelvemonth, largely because its hero was said to show a bad illustration for waxy immature readers.

1927: A interlingual rendition of The Arabian Nights by the Gallic bookman Mardrus was held up by U.S. Customs. Four old ages subsequently another interlingual rendition, by Sir Richard Burton, was allowed into the state, but the prohibition on the Mardrus version was maintained.

1929: Jack London ‘s popular novel Call of the Wild was banned in Italy and Yugoslavia. In 1932, transcripts of this and other books by London were burned by the Nazis in Germany.

1929: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was banned in the Soviet Union because of “ occultism. ”

1929-62: Novels by Ernest Hemingway were banned in assorted parts of the universe such as Italy, Ireland, and Germany ( where they were burned by the Nazis ) . In California in 1960, The Sun Besides Rises was banned from schools in San Jose and all of Hemingway ‘s plants were removed from Riverside school libraries. In 1962, a group called Texans for America opposed text editions that referred pupils to books by the Nobel Prize-winning writer.

1931: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was banned by the governor of Hunan state in China because, he said, animate beings should non utilize human linguistic communication and it was black to set animate beings and worlds on the same degree.

1932: In a missive to an American publishing house, James Joyce said that “ some really sort individual ” bought the full first edition of Dubliners and had it burnt.

1937: The Quebec authorities passed An Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda, popularly known as the Padlock Act. The legislative act empowered the lawyer general to shut, for up to one twelvemonth, any edifice that was used to circulate “ communism or Bolshevism. ” ( These two footings were undefined. ) In add-on, the act empowered the lawyer general to impound and destruct any publication propagating communism or Bolshevism. Anyone caught printing, printing, or administering such literature faced imprisonment for up to one twelvemonth without entreaty. In 1957, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the Padlock Act in a instance called Switzman vs. Elbling. The tribunal said that the act made the extension of communism a offense ; nevertheless, the tribunal ‘s ground for striking down the jurisprudence had less to make with the immoralities of censoring than with the division of powers between federal and provincial authoritiess. The tribunal declared that the power to go through condemnable jurisprudence belonged entirely to Ottawa, so Quebec ‘s Padlock Act was extremist vires and unconstitutional. Merely two justnesss raised the issue of censoring in this instance.

1953: The Irish authorities banned Anatole France ‘s A Mummer ‘s Tale ( for immorality ) , Hemingway ‘s The Sun Besides Rises and Across the River and Into the Trees ( for immorality ) , all the plants of John Steinbeck ( for corruption and immorality ) , all the plants of Emile Zola ( for immorality ) , and most plants by William Faulkner ( for immorality ) .

1954: Mickey Mouse cartoon strips were banned in East Berlin because Mickey was said to be an “ anti-Red Rebel. ”

1959: After protests by the White Citizens ‘ Council, The Rabbits ‘ Wedding, a image book for kids, was put on the reserved shelf in Alabama public libraries because it was thought to advance racial integrating.

1960: D.H. Lawrence ‘s fresh Lady Chatterley ‘s Lover was the topic of a test in England, in which Penguin Books was prosecuted for printing an obscene book. During the proceedings, the prosecuting officer asked: “ Is it a book you would wish your married woman or retainer to read? ” Penguin won the instance, and the book was allowed to be sold in England. A twelvemonth earlier, the U.S. Post Office had declared the fresh obscene and non-mailable. But a federal justice overturned the Post Office ‘s determination and questioned the right of the postmaster general to make up one’s mind what was or was non obscene.

1970: White Niggers of America, a political piece of land about Quebec political relations and society, was written by Pierre Vallieres while he was in gaol. The book was confiscated when the author was accused of sedition, and an edition published in France was non allowed into Canada. A U.S. edition was published in English in 1971.

1974: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence revealed some of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency ‘s dirty fast ones and failures overseas and in the United States. The writers ( Victor Marchetti, a former senior analyst for the CIA, and John D. Marks, a former U.S. State Department functionary ) were told by a U.S. tribunal to subject their manuscript to the CIA before the book was published. The CIA demanded the remotion of 339 transitions from the text, but finally the publishing house won the right to retain 171 of those in the first edition of the book. By 1980, the publishing house had won the legal right to print 25 more transitions, but the most recent edition ( 1989 ) still indicated legion censored transitions.

1977: Decent Interval, a memoir written by a former CIA employee, criticized the CIA, Henry Kissinger, and U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War. Author Frank Snepp succeeded in acquiring his book published before the CIA knew about it, but the authorities filed a case against him, even though no classified information appeared in the book. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Snepp ; the authorities seized all net incomes from the book and imposed a womb-to-tomb joke order on the writer. Snepp was required to subject everything he might write-fiction, screenplays, non-fiction, poetry-to the CIA for reappraisal. The CIA won the right to cut any classified or distinctive information within 30 yearss of reception of Snepp ‘s work.

1977: Maurice Sendak ‘s image book In the Night Kitchen was removed from the Norridge, Illinois, school library because of “ nakedness to no intent. ” The book was expurgated elsewhere when trunkss were drawn on the bare male child.

eightiess: During its scrutiny of school acquisition stuffs, the London County Council in England banned the usage of Beatrix Potter ‘s kids ‘s classics The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny from all London schools. The ground: the narratives portrayed merely “ middle-class coneies. ”

1983: Members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of The Diary of Anne Frank because it was “ a existent sedative. ” It was besides challenged for violative mentions to gender.

1987: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou was removed from the needed reading list for Wake County, North Carolina, high school pupils because of a scene in which the writer, at the age of seven and a half, is raped.

1987: After retiring from 20 old ages ‘ service with Britain ‘s MI5 counterintelligence bureau, Peter Wright moved to Australia and wrote his autobiography, entitled Spycatcher, in which he accused British security services of seeking to tumble Harold Wilson ‘s 1974-76 Labour authorities. The book, a best-seller, was banned in Britain, and the British authorities waged a drawn-out and expensive legal conflict to forestall its publication in Australia. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that if Wright of all time returned to Britain, he would be prosecuted for transgressing the state ‘s Official Secrets Act. But when Wright died in 1995, he got the last laugh, since his ashes were scattered over the Waterss of the Blackwater Sailing Club in southern England.

1998: In Kenya the authorities banned 30 books and publications for “ sedition and immorality, ” including The Citations of Chairman Mao and Salman Rushdie ‘s The Satanic Verses.

1998: American publishing houses expressed indignation over intelligence that a Washington bookshop was ordered to turn over records of Monica Lewinsky ‘s book purchases to independent advocate Kenneth Starr. Lewinsky is the former White House houseman with whom President Clinton had what he subsequently termed an “ inappropriate relationship. ” The Association of American Publishers declared: “ I do n’t believe the American people could happen anything more foreign to our manner of life or repugnant to the Bill of Rights than authorities invasion into what we think and what we read. I would propose Mr. Starr give some idea to his ain reading list. Maybe it ‘s clip for him to re-read the First Amendment. ”

2001: The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, passed by the American Congress in response to terrorist onslaughts on New York and Washington on September 11, gave the FBI power to roll up information about the library adoptions of any U.S. citizen. The act besides empowered the federal bureau to derive entree to library frequenters ‘ log-ons to Internet Web sites-and protected the FBI from unwraping the individualities of persons being investigated.